The Netherlands is engaged in reforming several of its public service provision sectors by limiting their hybrid (mixed public/private) character. This special issue deals with these reforms. We have a closer look at the systems of transport, education and housing, and also discuss reforms of the Dutch nation state. Each article poses three basic questions: why has the sector evolved as it has? Why is change seen as necessary? And how does this process take place? By doing so, we draw general lessons on how the Netherlands deals with system change and public management reform.

In policy practice sometimes organizational arrangements appear that at first glance manifest itself as cooperative relations between private organizations, but about which on second thoughts the question can be asked if after all there is an active input from the side of the government. This is for instance the case in the construction of biogas infrastructures. In this article the authors discuss if we can talk about PPC after all. In the debate on governance this question is important because in the design of PPC the public interest involved must be sufficiently guaranteed in terms of control and accountability. On the basis of a confrontation between the results of a literature review and an empirical study of the case of a Green Gas pipeline in North-East Friesland (‘Biogasleiding Noordoost Fryslân’) in the Netherlands, the authors conclude that public steering in practice can take a form in disguise. Using ‘intermediate’ civil law legal persons, governmental influence indeed can be and is exercised during the cooperation. Especially law poses specific demands on control and accountability to take care of public interests, like the promotion of the use of renewable energy. Likewise in this kind of projects, especially in comparison with pure private-private cooperation, the public and if possible even the public law regulation must be safeguarded, for instance by transparency of form and content of steering. Of course this has to be done with preservation of the cooperative nature that is typical of PPC.

Dramatic incidents, such as the 1986 Challenger Disaster, induce the instalment of a Commission to investigate the process that lead to the incident. The Commission attempts to reconstruct the many smaller and larger steps towards the one or several decisions and actions that turned out to be vital – and sometimes fatal. Most Commissions serve a dual purpose; the want to learn lessons and avert similar incidents to occur again, but they are also part of a process to allocate responsibilities and – sometimes – to point the blame. An analysis of Commission-reports reveals two dominant patterns in the narratives Commissions produce. One is relatively simple and identifies the decision or action that caused the incidents; it shows the mistakes that were made, when and by who, The lessons is often to not make the same mistake again. The second pattern is more complicated and produces less ‘crisp’ explanations for the incident. Decisions, actions take place in ambiguous, complex and inherently uncertain contexts. Actors acts amidst such complexity, are subject to all sorts of dynamics and pressures and in the process do things that look awkward or wrong in hindsight. Mistakes happen, not because actors are not smart enough or do the wrong things, but because they are an inherent element of complex decision making. The lesson that follows from that is for organizations that make important decisions under complex conditions to organize checks and balances and look for heterogeneity in their processes. That produces a difficult dilemma, given the ambivalent role of commissions. The second line of reasoning produces much richer lessons for policy, but is very ‘soft’ in casting blame. The first line of reasoning is clearer about responsibility and blame, but oversimplifies the lessons. That draws attention to a crucial – and yet unanswered – question for researchers, practitioners and also the general public; do we see them as platforms for learning or tools for sanctioning?

This article analyzes the inquiry into the financial problems at a large educational conglomerate, Amarantis, in the Netherlands. The article is solely based on the text of the report. From a learning point of view, assuming that inquiries should contribute to learning from the past to improve the present and future, there are three weaknesses in the approach followed by the commission. The first is that the commission looks at the principles for governing the organization to explain its fall. However, the principles adopted match very well with professional organizations and are used successfully in other professional organizations. The question why these principles were unsuccessful in the case of Amarantis has not been addressed in the report. Second, the report strongly focuses on the role of the top management of the organization and ignores the middle management, a critical layer in managing professional organisations. And third, by looking back the commission creates a bias of hindsight, ignoring the question of how the managers could have identified upcoming problems at that time.

In co-production processes, citizens and professionals both contribute to the provision of public services and try to enhance the quality of the services they produce. Although government offers several opportunities for co-production, not all citizens decide to actually take part. Current insights in citizens’ individual motivations offered by the co-production literature are limited. In this article, we integrate insights from different streams of literature to build a theoretical model that explains citizens’ motivations to co-produce. We test the model using empirical data of Dutch neighborhood watches.

Over hoe de VNG met commissies agendeert en hoe dat soms mislukt

Committees are connected with the political culture of the Netherlands. It is no surprise that organizations that promote certain interests aim at bringing forward their members’ interests by installing committees. Lobbying through a committee, however, is a delicate matter. What elements lead to a committee that is a successful instrument of lobby? A comparison between the committees of the Dutch Union of Municipalities (VNG) led by Jorritsma, Bovens and Van Aartsen on one hand and the committee led by Nijpels on the other shows that the denial of problems and shortcomings does not help the organization or person that asks for the advice of the committee. This person or organization benefits most if the committee points out existing displeasure with the functioning of the person or organization. Yet at the same time, the committee must present a way ahead and proposals for improvement. This gives a positive turn to the criticism and presents a perspective for improvement.

Political and policy decisions are often presented as neutral choices. Yet, seemingly neutral and widely accepted views are ideologically embedded in a vision on how society should look and what role citizens have to play. These ideologies, we argue, remain silent. In this special issue, we discuss the value and risks of silent ideologies. While silent ideologies may be functional in some cases, there are also risks. The various contributions show that there is a risk of criticism, new ideas and innovative solutions being removed from the political debate. Also, silent ideologies may conceal conflicting interests of citizens and the state, which may exclude the ‘irresponsible’ citizen from the public domain. We argue that public officials and civil servants should take up a role in addressing silent ideologies and their workings.

‘Big Society’ has been one of those inspirational concepts that have recently swept through the public administration literature. With their appeal for a ‘Big Society’, the British Tories contrasted their policy program with Labours’ traditional ‘Big Government’ program. Upon closer inspection, however, it is revealed that the underlying analysis is not new at all, but reflects a specific analysis that can be traced back to Wilson’s famous essay on the study of public administration in 1887. Stripped from its details, the never-ending story claims that public administration now struggles with overwhelming complexity, which makes traditional bureaucratic methods obsolete and calls for innovative, new approaches. The fact that this story has remained fairly constant for over 125 years is cause for some concern. The article traces the historical genesis of this never-ending story and lands on a plea for more sophisticated attention for administrative history, more critical scrutiny of new ideas and more serious study of the nature and effects of complexity.

Humberto is the name of a popular presentor on Dutch radio and television. In response to an item on a conflict between the Labour Inspectorate and the police authorities, he hesitantly posed the question whether the government should interfere. This is the paradox of citizens viewing the government sometimes as a single actor, whereas at other times they seem to acknowledge the fact that government consists of multiple actors. The use of co-creation and digital platforms could provide means that help todays government to mediate between the two extreme perceptions of government as a unitary actor and government as a conglomerate of actors operating in a networked society in which sometimes government organisations and sometimes other actors, including (groups) of citizens, in society take initiatives to promote and contribute to public values.

The factor time is an often neglected issue in the literature on network governance. In this article we analyze the differences in perceptions on time between actors involved in water governance and describe the managerial interventions aimed at synchronizing time horizons, managing the available amount of time and the tempo of the governance process. Two case studies of governance processes in the district of Water Board Delfland are included to provide insight in the question how the factor time influences the governance processes and how aspects of time are managed. The case studies show that different perceptions of time may cause tensions in collaborative relationships, and even cause the end of collaborations. This underscores the importance of time-sensitive governance.

Social policy has to be legitimate. But what is legitimacy? And what makes policy legitimate? This article argues that in order to be legitimate policy needs to answer to three different logics: the logic of the policy system, of external conditions, and of societal preferences. However, these three logics are often not coherent and point in different directions. Also, signs are often not coherent and are ambiguous at best. Therefore, following the three logics is not merely a matter of reading the signs, but of interpreting and balancing them. This article shows how policy makers in the Netherlands are balancing for responsiveness in three cases of social policy: social assistance policy, sheltered work policy and labor migration policy. The cases learn that responsiveness does not come from large decisive reforms, but from a wide range of small and often hardly politicized steps. Also, we see that in balancing the various logics, policy makers have a strong bias towards the logic of the policy system and that of public preference, and pay far less attention to external conditions. However, on the longer term external conditions cannot be neglected and policy makers face tough decisions about short term responsiveness towards public preferences and more longer term actions that make for policies that are more balanced with external conditions and therefore sustainable on the longer term.

The lessons learned from the financial crisis are not necessarily limited to the financial sector. Both the financial sector and the public sector have to deal with perverse effects. The effects can be related to a reduction of complexity and plurality through introducing (oversimplified and one dimensional) models and financial incentives. However, in doing this, complexity and plurality are often lost: the neglect of multiple interests, goal replacement and too much focus on short term results. As a consequence perverse effects arise.Public sectors and organizations face internal and external pressure to act as they do. At the level of organizations or groups this may involve groupthink; at institutional level uniformity is promoted by the dynamics of isomorphism. This article is a critique on simplification and a plea for the (re)introduction of plurality. More specifically, we stress the importance of individual moral responsibility as a resource for and a way to preserve plurality. Not because that is the only option, but because it is an option that we believe deserves more attention. Other options such as changing regulations and changing the structure of supervision are already broadly discussed. We want to draw attention to the individual as parts of multiple organizations and systems. Individuals are therefore a natural carrier of multiplicity and plurality. Taking moral responsibility serious is not an easy task, but a meaningful step towards awareness of perverse effects due to reduction of complexity and plurality.

De facto autonomy, the actual potential of regulatory agencies to go about their daily work, is often conceived to be more important to explain regulatory capacity than its formal autonomy and responsibilities. In this article we investigate whether external context factors, such as the financial and economic crisis have an impact on de facto autonomy. More specifically, we investigate whether the de facto autonomy varies after the crisis and distinctively so for specific subsets of employees within regulatory agencies. According to literature, mid-level managers of agencies are key to de facto autonomy and building a secure reputation for the agency in question. We test these external and internal effects on de facto autonomy with a survey among employees of the Dutch Financial Market Authority (N = 248). The findings show that the perceived influence of stakeholders is relatively constant, but that it is more dynamic for European stakeholders. Both middle managers and employees working at strategic and policy departments of the agency conceive the impact of European stakeholders as increasing in nature. The findings have important implications for our studies of de facto autonomy of regulatory agencies as well as reform potential after major institutional crises.

The world-wide meltdown of financial markets is one of the largest human-made crises in modern times. The question that trembles on the lips of many researcher is why the main actors, all considered as rational, have displayed such self-destructing behaviour. Answers have been sought and partially found in theories as varied as ‘regulatory capture’, ‘failed regulation’, and inadequate crisis management. In this special issue, an alternative view is suggested. The financial sector, like any other complex sector, is made up of loosely coupled actors and actor settings (i.e. financial institutions, regulatory bodies, political actors), each driven by different action logics. The studies in this special issue each deeply examine the action logic of one actor group. The purpose of this issue is hence to parcel out the various action logics and suggest directions for further research to combine better the various actors and their differing action logics.